


Long Black Train

by cher



Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Black Train

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nemo_the_Everbeing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemo_the_Everbeing/gifts).



The seventh of November, and there was chaos, just as he’d wanted, the man called V. Finch thanked his stars that the army men had kept cool heads when it came to it, and that there would be no blood bath, no civil war in the streets. One stray shot into an anonymous black cape and things would have been much worse for England.

Finch thought it was V’s words echoing through the minds of England, army and masked civilians alike, _something terribly wrong with this country_ ; those words staying fingers on triggers and the voices of the commanders. God bless the terrorist V, and may God help him for saying so.

As it was, they had Dascomb trying to hold the tattered threads of order together, spinning, spinning, his desperation obvious to any fool, and England hadn’t been full of fools for a long time now. Any day now there would be a new leader rising with the people’s support, and then. And then. And then Finch would stand trial, probably, perhaps go to prison. Perhaps be thrown to the mob; it would depend on the new leader’s stripes.

The people would need it, to deal punishment to the Party. There might have been more atrocities in the street, without those echoing words. Finch wouldn’t be investigating too many deaths of Fingermen, though, not even if he were still alive and free when it all shook out.

Not many of the Party still standing; not the truly guilty. Finch would be figurehead enough for them.

*

When it came to it, the trial – for a court of law it was, cobbled together with what legal knowledge could be found in the still-living public – was brutal, and long, and spat him out older and sadder and demoted, but free. Miss Hammond spoke for him and more than spoke for him; that was enough in those first raw months when revolution and courage still held the people’s minds. Another year and her voice would have been a mark against him, too challenging and too wild as England settled back down into British decorum and reserve.

And Dominic spoke for him in three days of gruelling cross examination, and Finch bowed his head at his words. He hadn’t felt like a good man in a long, long time, but sitting in the dock that day he felt some of his sins slide from his shoulders, knocked loose by Dominic’s calm voice.

They tried Dominic as well, but if they hadn’t hung Finch they had no reason to throw Dominic in irons.

And so he was a detective again, and Dominic his partner, and life went on.

*

Someone had built a memorial for Deitrich, and he passed it sometimes. A monument to a man who died a martyr and a hero, who would have dared, Finch thought, even had he known what would happen to him.

As it was, he hadn’t, and Finch had time only to share a few minutes with the man, bloodied and resigned. A look had passed between them, small comfort between two men used to keeping their true selves locked away. No Qur'an hidden under Finch’s bed, no, and no pretty young men on his walls either, but a reluctance for entertaining pretty young ladies – that they had had in common.

Then there was Creedy, and Finch had one more good man’s death on his soul.

The memorial stood in a pool, and on clear days Finch caught glimpses of his rumpled face in the water. His detective’s eyes never failed to notice that he wore the face of a man who ate alone, slept alone and got out of bed alone. Deitrich had that look as well, in spite, Finch thought, of the artist’s intentions.

Finch nodded to the bronze-cast face of the memorial, and walked on, back to his empty apartment and his last bottle of supply-train single malt.

*

He didn’t go home at all, some nights, preferring the company of a case file and terrible coffee to his flat’s oppressive quiet. Under Sutler, the emptiness had felt safe and necessary, just one more sacrifice to the Party, insurance against midnight shouts and his front door crashing down.

Without that fear – and the new leader was out-and-out _gay,_ of all the tectonic changes wrought by V – Finch’s bolthole felt more and more like cowardice.

It was hard, he thought, seeing Dominic’s too-sharp concern on those mornings in the office, Finch’s lack of sleep weighing him down and drawing dark rings under his eyes. It was hard to undo thirty years of conditioning under suspicion and fear, and his self was still buried under locks of practicality and shame, no closer to freedom than the night he’d seen Deitrich killed.

He was glad of the blessed simplicity of a case these days, just a simple, honest murder to solve. No politics, no Creedy, no disappeared or altered or plain fabricated evidence, just Dominic ready with the background checks on the suspects and the witnesses to interview. Less CCTV evidence nowadays; England was tired of surveillance and took poorly to cameras in the streets.

Finch was a career lawman, like his mother and his father before him. He was a damn good detective; as he told Dominic, he had to know, had to find out. The politics going on among the Powers That Be – well, in his youth he’d paid little attention. And so he’d joined the damn Party, because it was Norsefire or no job with the force past a beat cop, and thought no more about it.

One day he woke up and he was reporting directly to Grand Chancellor Sutler, and when he got to thinking he was still quietly bemused as to how he’d ended up there. Chief Inspector to the Nazis come again, and Finch had read his history in this youth, knew what happened to average people when asked to commit horrors by authorities. He tried not to be one of those committing horrors, tried to keep Creedy out of matters when he could, but Creedy’s eyes were everywhere.

Finch knew better than anyone what Creedy could see, how far his reach ran. It made him hide those parts of him that were _undesirable_ so deep that he didn’t know he could ever find them again.

But Dominic was throwing clues to him with every coffee put by his elbow and every cheap takeaway meal shared at four AM over a case file. Dominic had been right there next to him for years, and who else in this blasted world could he say the same of?

Finch might never be ready put aside fear and habit, he might never be ready to share his bed. That was a life he might never have, Dominic in the morning light, drinking Finch’s good coffee by the window.

But then, Parliament might never have come down, and it had. There was hope.


End file.
